Of Mice, Materials and Men

We are accustomed to medical breakthrough hype and outer-space revelations. And, one doesn’t have to look far to read of tantalizing material science stories. So, while greed, lawsuits and obfuscation hound commercialization of LENR, let’s sample what science and business sectors published this week:

1. Thermally Activated Delayed Florescence in OLED Devices -Osaka University
Novel TADF emitters have high quantum efficiencies of up to 16%, greatly surpassing the 5% limit of conventional Organic Light-Emitting Diodes.
http://www.sciencecodex.com/triple_external_quantum_efficiencies_a_new_material_tadf_was_developed-185351

2. Drones Take Off
The take-aways:
Revenues about to jump as regulators open up new opportunities in the US and EU.
Collision avoidance makes drones safe even in crowded skies.
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-drones-report-research-use-cases-regulations-and-issues-2016-4

3. New Helium Find in eastern Africa is “game changer”
This discovery potentially meets global demand for several years.
Tanzanian geological history could be used to detect assessable deposits on other continents.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jun/28/huge-helium-gas-tanzania-east-africa-averts-medical-shortage

4. Britain Takes Delivery of first of 138 F-35 Stealth Fighters
This US-built aircraft cannot excel at what home-built Spitfires did in the early 1940s. Now, with a devalued pound, the Brits have problems making payment on the plane order -as well as following through with a Chinese-financed Hinkley Point nuclear reactor.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/29/long-awaited-70m-stealth-fighter-jet-arrives-in-britain-for-the/

5. Canada, Mexico and US agree on Producing Half Their Energy From Renewables by 2025
http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/news/news-picks/us--canada--and-mexico-agree-to-produce-half-their-energy-from-renewables-by-2025-a-news-pick-post

Having set aside the LENR saga (as mainline media has always done) we have a glimpse of what the business press and science journals consider newsworthy at the end of June 2016.

July 1st Update:
A week after Brexit, Austria announces it will re-run May's presidential election in the fall. This could encourage other anti-immigration parties in the EU to follow through with referendums.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/01/austrias-presidential-election-re-run-could-not-come-at-a-worse/

July 2nd Update
Now comes Coalexit:
http://www.thelocal.de/20160702/sweden-backs-vattenfall-exit-from-german-coal
This is likely a strategic move on the part of Vattenfaall (and its owner, Sweden) to be ready for big investments in LENR.

Post Brexit -Legacy Energy vs LENR

For the environment and humanity, legacy energy infrastructures are destructive forces. By comparison LENR, is benign and inexpensive.

Nuclear energy plants are dangerous because, (a) they emit radiation, (b) radioactive waste accumulates, (c) strong radioactivity gradually weakens cement containment structures and (d) plants are expensive to build, maintain and dismantle. Fossil-fueled energy generation is damaging because of CO2 emissions and air-borne particulates.

In spite of all that, the nuclear industry and their national regulators claim nuclear still has the cleanest and safest track record of any existing power source. Even the UN advocates further proliferation of nuclear plants for energy production even though the uranium process can be used by rogue nations in production of nuclear bombs. Also, pension funds are so heavily weighted by legacy energy stocks that big investors hinder national and international research into promising non-fissionable energy sources.

To address the world’s growing energy needs, available options include cleaning up coal, offering subsides for solar and wind turbine installations, encouraging on-going search for oil and gas as well as building new pipelines and extending operational life-spans of 70s era nuclear plants. Any and all of the above to ensure profits, rather than humanitarian engineering of LENR to control rising temperatures, rising coastal waters, air pollution and to alleviate hunger and thirst in poor nations.

More governments might advance LENR engineering so that nonradioactive-type reactors be retro-fitted to boilers of formerly fossil-fueled plants and nuclear plants. Although LENR technology has been replicated, patents issued and operational demonstrations made in Florida, Switzerland and Sweden, mainline media have been reluctant to report on it –likely because big advertisers are concerned about major disruption to their markets.

Earlier Londont posts expand on many of the issues raised here. Consider joining an urgent end-run around captive media and crippled science journals in bringing awareness of the LENR solution to politicians and to voters.

This post goes live just as the Brexit referendum results are being digested. To energy watchers throughout the British Isles, in a smaller European Union and in other major trading nations, the reactions are mixed. A BBC article expresses concerns of UK scientists that continued financial support of their major science projects can no longer be taken for granted.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-36622842

Update July 28, 2016
Giant French nuclear utility votes to proceed with the UK's Hinkley Point nuclear plant, while a director resigns and the British government postpones approval.
http://www.dw.com/en/france-edf-to-go-ahead-with-china-funded-nuclear-power-station-in-uk/a-19433416

US Military Taking LENR Seriously

Here are excerpts from the US Armed Services Committee's report on Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR) Briefing:

"The committee is aware of recent positive developments in developing low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR), which produce ultra-clean, low-cost renewable energy that have strong national security implications. For example, according to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), if LENR works it will be a “disruptive technology that could revolutionize energy production and *storage.

The committee is also aware of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s (DARPA) findings that other countries including China and India are moving forward with LENR programs of their own and that Japan has actually created its own investment fund to promote such technology. DIA has also assessed that Japan and Italy are leaders in the field and that Russia, China, Israel, and India are now devoting significant resources to LENR development.

To better understand the national security implications of these developments, the committee directs the Secretary of Defense to provide a briefing on the military utility of recent U.S. industrial base LENR advancements to the House Committee on Armed Services by September 22, 2016. This briefing should examine the current state of research in the United States, how that compares to work being done internationally, and an assessment of the type of military applications where this technology could potentially be useful."

Politicians, educators and industrial leaders at all levels should be following these LENR developments. E-cat World forum and the LENRIA organization provide timely assessments:
http://www.e-catworld.com/2016/06/14/house-committee-requires-lenr-briefing-from-secretary-of-defense-lenria-press-release/

*In regards to LENR and storage, what the military likely sees down the road is less dependence on vulnerable centralized energy production and associated mega-grids. It's not so much about battery breakthroughs as it is about LENR's point-source generation.

Update:
On the Israeldefense website is a Hebrew article (of June 17, 2016) referencing co-research with the US on using LENR technology to power battlefield lazers. Perhaps a reader will provide a translation of the applicable paragraph.

Warmer Jet Stream = Alpine and Arctic Disasters

Your attention is directed to a couple of informative articles by Inside Climate News. The first relates to fast-receding glaciers in the Alps and the second to the impact of the jet steam on the Arctic.

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/27042016/austria-glaciers-melting-fast-climate-change-global-warming-alps-pasterze
"Over the next few decades, projections for Austria's glaciers range from total meltdown to a loss of about 50 percent of glacier volume by 2050."
The future of Alpine glaciers, ski slopes and hydroelectric plants are at the mercy of milder weather. There is a sense of helplessness because climate change solutions proposed last December would take many decades to have any favourable impact. Quick thaws and fast run-offs are almost impossible to slow down.
Whereas, the article does not identify any solutions, radical and immediate action is required to limit glacial run-off. A couple of ideas:
!. Damming some of the high glacial valleys would conserve cold water flows for electricity generation, and
2. Engineering a film or spray could isolate ice surface from warm winds.

Elsewhere, climate modelers, while blaming greenhouse gases, have trouble accommodating the latest twists of Mother Nature.
http://insideclimatenews.org/news/08062016/greenland-arctic-record-melt-jet-stream-wobbly-global-warming-climate-change
"... just one example of the profound influences flowing from changes in the jet stream, a river of air flowing west to east in a sinuous pattern around the northern hemisphere. In recent years, its wavy line has drifted farther north... If we are changing the atmosphere in a way that has not been happening before, with greenhouse gases, then even if we have the tools to make projections based on observations, we won't know how to model for the future."

Again, a pessimistic assessment.
But, there is reason to hope.

Protecting polluting and radioactive energy industries is no longer tolerable when cheap and clean LENR-type power generation is imminent.
All it takes is for alert and informed voters to build consensus leading to political action.


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Wind Turbines vs Lake Huron Beaches

Apparently more wind turbines are proposed for Lake Huron's western shore. Yes, the breezes are brisk along Highway 21. Having desecrated the landscape with wind farms, the next beach-head for power-hungry turbiners could be just out beyond the surf pounding Lambton, Huron and Bruce county beaches.

There is money in the wind when developers secure sweetheart deals with politicians, especially if they collaborate in securing long-term permits before the emergence of cheaper LENR-type on-site generation of electricity by industrial and ultimately by residential consumers.

Although the Low Energy Nuclear Reactor (LENR) technology has been replicated, patents issued and test plants operated in Florida, Switzerland and Sweden, mainline media are reluctant to report on it –likely because big advertisers are concerned about disruptions to their markets.

While large nations engage in LENR R&D, Canada offers excuses for sitting on the fence. Such excuses won’t protect our living standards as our competitors shift from centralized fossil-fueled and nuclear energy to nonpolluting nonradioactive dispersed energy production.

According to a draft report from a federal government think-tank, Canada's status as an energy superpower is under threat. "It is increasingly plausible to foresee a future in which cheap renewable electricity becomes the world's primary power source and fossil fuels are relegated to a minority status," reads the conclusion of a draft report by Policy Horizons Canada.

As with the dream of electric cars, the dream of getting off the grid is neigh.

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Seamus Heaney, the late Irish poet and Harvard professor, in his translation of the Scandinavian Beowulf saga, wrote:
“Behaviour that’s admired is the path to power among people everywhere.”
Oh yes, he also made a translation of the Irish saga, “Sweeney Astray.”